If you like a nice clean black motherboard design with a few red highlights then the Gaming Series from Gigabyte is a great choice and their new X99 Gaming 5 will let you update to DDR4 and Haswell-E. The four PCIe 3.0 slots can support up to x16/x0/x16/x8 or x8/x8/x16/x8 with the appropriate processor and the storage system is rather impressive with up to 10 SATA 6Gbps ports, a single SATA Express port, M.2, eight USB 3.0 port and eight USB 2.0 ports of which four are shielded for use with external DACs. Speaking of sound, there is an OP-AMP socket and dedicated audio capacitors to let you get the best out of the onboard Realtec codec. To see how it performs, overclocks and even more check out [H]ard|OCP's full review or if you need even more features you can look back at Morry's review of the Gaming G1.

"GIGABYTE’s latest X99 Gaming 5 promises to be a solid overclocker with great features and a reasonable price tag. It comes with features like "Server Level Chokes" from Cooper Bussman and an all digital power solution from Power IR. Long Lifespan Durable Black capacitors and single package MOSFETs make the list as well."

In 2008 Gabe Newell contacted a Greek academic economist by the name of Yanis Varoufakis to see if he would be interested in consulting with Valve on how to create a successful shared economy as well as how to balance payments globally and between the real and virtual economies that Valve now has. He agreed and among other things started a Valve Economist blog which you can start reading here and which shows that he did contribute far more than just hats and the dreaded Steam Sale. In what seems at first to be a rather bizarre turnaround in his career Yanis has gone from author, blogger and Valve consultant to being appointed the Finance Minister of his home country of Greece. A closer look at his bona fides provide a good explanation, as he has been focused on how European economies interact since before the beginning of the economic downturns and austerity measures in countries like Greece. Follow the previous links for a look at what he has accomplished or if you prefer, head to Slashdot for more hat jokes.

"A turnover in the Greek government resulted from recent snap elections placing SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left) in power — just shy of an outright majority by two seats. Atheist, and youngest Prime Minister in Greek history since 1865, Alexis Tsipras has been appointed the new prime minister and begun taking immediate drastic steps against the recent austerity laws put in place by prior administrations. One such step has been to appoint Valve's economist Yanis Varoufakis to position of Finance Minister of Greece."

In the fall it was confirmed by Samsung that stale data on some 840 EVO drives would suffer performance degradation and released a tool to mitigate the issue which Al reviewed here. The Tech Report recently heard of some cases of drives slowing even with the new EXT0CB6Q firmware installed and decided to investigate. They took a 840 EVO 250GB SSD which had been filled with files to test the patch and was then left forgotten on a shelf for several months and tested the speeds. The benchmarks showed an average speed between 35-54MB/s far below what you would expect to see from an SSD but in line with what users have been reported. On the other hand another 840 EVO which has been in constant use since the firmware update shows no signs whatsoever of slowing down, though NTFS compression was recently used on the drive which could have refreshed the flash. Obviously more testing needs to be done, keep your eyes out for updates on this new development.

"In October, Samsung patched its 840 EVO SSD to address a problem that caused slow read speeds with old data. Recent reports suggest the issue isn't completely fixed, and the results of our own testing agree."

Pictured below is a VisionTek R9 290 using a watercooler custome designed by EK Water Blocks for a limited edition of CryoVenom R9 290 LE and gives this build some serious GPU power. As this system build is being done by Silent PC Review a generic pump is not going to cut the mustard and instead they chose the Swiftech MCP655 PWM for its low noise while operating. To cool off the i7-4790K a VisionTek/EK Supremacy waterblock was chosen as IK produces very high quality parts. To house the build a Phanteks Enthoo Luxe was chosen for it space and the ease of installing a radiator as well as its clean overall design. Check out the full build over at SPCR.

Backblaze is a moderately sized hosting company with about 40,000 disks set up in their own style of arrays called Storage Pods, which are open sourced so that you can build one yourself if you so desire. Every once and a while they put out reliability numbers for the HDDs that they use in their arrays; the newest report just arrived for your perusal. This is good as most reliability and market share studies are done by professional organizations which they tend to charge quite a bit for their findings as they do put a lot of effort into ensuring that their data is correct. Unfortunately that also means that most people do not have access to the information and make judgments based on incomplete or incorrect data. As The Register points out, 40,000 HDDs is a very small sample size compared to the market as a whole or even large hosting companies and so the data set you can see here may not be the best representation of the actual market failure rates projected from it may not be overly accurate. On the other hand it is nice to have any data, especially when you are provided with the actual sample size and a definition of failure. If you are really into the numbers game, spend some time researching the Mean Time Between Failure and Average Failure Rate and the ongoing debate on how to properly measure expected mortality rates among large drives.

"We're not entirely comfortable with cloud backup outfit Backblaze's data on disk drive reliability, but the company has just popped out another year's worth of analysis on which drives hang around longest. With due scepticism, let's have a look."

UPDATE 1/26/15 @ 12:10am ET: I now have a lot more information on the technical details of the architecture that cause this issue and more information from NVIDIA to explain it. I spoke with SVP of GPU Engineering Jonah Alben on Sunday night to really dive into the quesitons everyone had. Expect an update here on this page at 10am PT / 1pm ET or so. Bookmark and check back!

UPDATE 1/24/15 @ 11:25pm ET: Apparently there is some concern online that the statement below is not legitimate. I can assure you that the information did come from NVIDIA, though is not attributal to any specific person - the message was sent through a couple of different PR people and is the result of meetings and multiple NVIDIA employee's input. It is really a message from the company, not any one individual. I have had several 10-20 minute phone calls with NVIDIA about this issue and this statement on Saturday alone, so I know that the information wasn't from a spoofed email, etc. Also, this statement was posted by an employee moderator on the GeForce.com forums about 6 hours ago, further proving that the statement is directly from NVIDIA. I hope this clears up any concerns around the validity of the below information!

Over the past couple of weeks users of GeForce GTX 970 cards have noticed and started researching a problem with memory allocation in memory-heavy gaming. Essentially, gamers noticed that the GTX 970 with its 4GB of system memory was only ever accessing 3.5GB of that memory. When it did attempt to access the final 500MB of memory, performance seemed to drop dramatically. What started as simply a forum discussion blew up into news that was being reported at tech and gaming sites across the web.

NVIDIA has finally responded to the widespread online complaints about GeForce GTX 970 cards only utilizing 3.5GB of their 4GB frame buffer. From the horse's mouth:

The GeForce GTX 970 is equipped with 4GB of dedicated graphics memory. However the 970 has a different configuration of SMs than the 980, and fewer crossbar resources to the memory system. To optimally manage memory traffic in this configuration, we segment graphics memory into a 3.5GB section and a 0.5GB section. The GPU has higher priority access to the 3.5GB section. When a game needs less than 3.5GB of video memory per draw command then it will only access the first partition, and 3rd party applications that measure memory usage will report 3.5GB of memory in use on GTX 970, but may report more for GTX 980 if there is more memory used by other commands. When a game requires more than 3.5GB of memory then we use both segments.

We understand there have been some questions about how the GTX 970 will perform when it accesses the 0.5GB memory segment. The best way to test that is to look at game performance. Compare a GTX 980 to a 970 on a game that uses less than 3.5GB. Then turn up the settings so the game needs more than 3.5GB and compare 980 and 970 performance again.

Here’s an example of some performance data:

GTX 980

GTX 970

Shadow of Mordor

<3.5GB setting = 2688x1512 Very High

72 FPS

60 FPS

>3.5GB setting = 3456x1944

55 FPS (-24%)

45 FPS (-25%)

Battlefield 4

<3.5GB setting = 3840x2160 2xMSAA

36 FPS

30 FPS

>3.5GB setting = 3840x2160 135% res

19 FPS (-47%)

15 FPS (-50%)

Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare

<3.5GB setting = 3840x2160 FSMAA T2x, Supersampling off

82 FPS

71 FPS

>3.5GB setting = 3840x2160 FSMAA T2x, Supersampling on

48 FPS (-41%)

40 FPS (-44%)

On GTX 980, Shadows of Mordor drops about 24% on GTX 980 and 25% on GTX 970, a 1% difference. On Battlefield 4, the drop is 47% on GTX 980 and 50% on GTX 970, a 3% difference. On CoD: AW, the drop is 41% on GTX 980 and 44% on GTX 970, a 3% difference. As you can see, there is very little change in the performance of the GTX 970 relative to GTX 980 on these games when it is using the 0.5GB segment.

So it would appear that the severing of a trio of SMMs to make the GTX 970 different than the GTX 980 was the root cause of the issue. I'm not sure if this something that we have seen before with NVIDIA GPUs that are cut down in the same way, but I have asked for clarification from NVIDIA on that. The ratios fit: 500MB is 1/8th of the 4GB total memory capacity and 2 SMMs is 1/8th of the total SMM count. (Edit: The ratios in fact do NOT match up...odd.)

The full GM204 GPU that is the root cause of this memory issue.

Another theory presented itself as well: is this possibly the reason we do not have a GTX 960 Ti yet? If the patterns were followed from previous generations a GTX 960 Ti would be a GM204 GPU with fewer cores enabled and additional SMs disconnected to enable a lower price point. If this memory issue were to be even more substantial, creating larger differentiated "pools" of memory, then it could be an issue for performance or driver development. To be clear, we are just guessing on this one and that could be something that would not occur at all. Again, I've asked NVIDIA for some technical clarification.

Requests for information aside, we may never know for sure if this is a bug with the GM204 ASIC or predetermined characteristic of design.

The questions remains: does NVIDIA's response appease GTX 970 owners? After all, this memory concern is really just a part of a GPU's story and thus performance testing and analysis already incorporates it essentially. Some users will still likely make a claim of a "bait and switch" but do the benchmarks above, as well as our own results at 4K, make it a less significant issue?

Our own Josh Walrath offers this analysis:

A few days ago when we were presented with evidence of the 970 not fully utilizing all 4 GB of memory, I theorized that it had to do with the reduction of SMM units. It makes sense from an efficiency standpoint to perhaps "hard code" memory addresses for each SMM. The thought behind that would be that 4 GB of memory is a huge amount of a video card, and the potential performance gains of a more flexible system would be pretty minimal.

I believe that the memory controller is working as intended and not a bug. When designing a large GPU, there will invariably be compromises made. From all indications NVIDIA decided to save time, die size, and power by simplifying the memory controller and crossbar setup. These things have a direct impact on time to market and power efficiency. NVIDIA probably figured that a couple percentage of performance lost was outweighed by the added complexity, power consumption, and engineering resources that it would have taken to gain those few percentage points back.

With the release of GTX 960 yesterday NVIDIA also introduced a new version of the GeForce graphics driver, 347.25 - WHQL.

NVIDIA states that the new driver adds "performance optimizations, SLI profiles, expanded Multi-Frame Sampled Anti-Aliasing support, and support for the new GeForce GTX 960".

While support for the newly released GPU goes without saying, the expanded MFAA support will help provide better anti-aliasing performance to many existing games, as “MFAA support is extended to nearly every DX10 and DX11 title”. In the release notes three games are listed that do not benefit from the MFAA support, as “Dead Rising 3, Dragon Age 2, and Max Payne 3 are incompatible with MFAA”.

347.25 also brings additional SLI profiles to add support for five new games, and a DirectX 11 SLI profile for one more:

SLI profiles added

Black Desert

Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris

Nosgoth

Zhu Xian Shi Jie

The Talos Principle

DirectX 11 SLI profile added

Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn

The update is also the Game Ready Driver for Dying Light, a zombie action/survival game set to debut on January 27.

Microsoft has added DirectX 12 with the latest Windows 10 Technical Preview that was released today. Until today, DXDIAG reported DirectX 11 in the Windows 10 Technical Preview. At the moment, there has not been any drivers or software released for it, and the SDK is also no-where to be found. Really, all this means is that one barrier has been lifted, leaving the burden on hardware and software partners (except to release the SDK, that's still Microsoft's responsibility).

No-one needs to know how old my motherboard is...

Note: I have already experienced some issues with Build 9926. Within a half hour of using it, I suffered an instant power-down. There was not even enough time for a bluescreen. When it came back, my Intel GPU (which worked for a few minutes after the update) refused to be activated, along with the monitor it is attached to. My point? Not for production machines.

Update: Looks like a stick of RAM (or some other hardware) blew, coincidentally, about 30 minutes after the update finished, while the computer was running, which also confused my UEFI settings. I haven't got around to troubleshooting much, but it seems like a weirdly-timed, abrupt hardware failure (BIOS is only reporting half of the RAM installed, iGPU is "enabled" but without RAM associated to it, etc.).

The interesting part, to me, is how Microsoft pushed DX12 into this release without, you know, telling anyone. It is not on any changelog that I can see, and it was not mentioned anywhere in the briefing as potentially being in an upcoming preview build. Before the keynote, I had a theory that it would be included but, after the announcement, figured that it might be pushed until GDC or BUILD (but I kept an open mind). The only evidence that it might come this month was an editorial on Forbes that referenced a conversation with Futuremark, who allegedly wanted to release an update to 3DMark (they hoped) when Microsoft released the new build. I could not find anything else, so I didn't report on it -- you would think that there would be a second source for that somewhere. It turns out that he might be right.

The new Windows 10 Technical Preview, containing DirectX 12, is available now from the preview build panel. It looks like Futuremark (and maybe others) will soon release software for it, but no hardware vendor has released a driver... yet.

The Reeven heatsink stands a mere 125x60x129 mm and weighs barely over a pound even with the included fan installed. This will be perfect for an incredibly thin system and with its small foot print it won't interfere with your RAM as it is not big enough to overhang the DIMMs on most boards. This will by necessity reduce the cooling capabilities as you can see in techPowerUp's testing with an i7-4770K. For those looking for a tiny system that is not going to be an issue and at full speed the fan doesn't reach more than 47dBA so it is also good for those who desire quiet as well as small size. This one is worth checking out if you are looking at this type of build.

"Reveen looks to impress with their small-form-factor friendly Steropes low-profile CPU cooler. At just 60 mm tall, this diminutive cooler may lack size, but it certainly doesn't lack style. Offering solid performance and low noise, it might be just what you need for a SFF or HTPC."

The newest in Gigabyte's Raptor lineup is the FORCE M63 gaming mouse, with sensitivity adjustable between 50 to 4000 DPI and a pack of weights which allow you to adjust between 1.8 to 21.3g. The sensor is an Avago a3090 and the buttons all use OMRON and TTC switches and there is enough onboard memory to program the 10 buttons in numerous profiles, each of which can produce a different coloured light on your mouse wheel if you so choose. Modders Inc were quite happy with the performance, head on over to see shots of the innards of the mouse as well as the software.

"To win in the game you need to customize your controls for maximum speed and comfort. It is very important to feel in control of your character whether you are playing an FPS game or an RPG. If you think all of the peripherals are equal in performance, comfort or customization; you are wrong. There are numerous types and styles …"

That fancy black visor was not what was provided to those lucky few who were invited to try out the HoloLens after the WinX presentation. The working model consists of straps and an adjustable headband holding the lenses all enclosed within a wire frame to which is attached an external enclosure holding the battery and processors. There were four different experiments to try, including the Minecraft looking demo we saw on stage and a virtual Mars experience using the data captured by Curiosity. We won't be seeing the slick model demonstrated on stage any time soon but the technology is solid and was enough to convince The Register that Microsoft has an incredible product in store for us.

"During Wednesday's Windows 10 preview day, select groups of hacks were stripped of any recording devices or cameras and sent down into the bowels of Building 92 of Microsoft's Redmond campus to try out the HoloLens, the software giant's new "hologramatic" wearable."

MSI will soon release three new All In One PCs under its Adora and Entertainment series. The new PCs are powered by AMD’s Beema APU and are aimed at light duty home computing and commercial applications respectively.

MSI AE200 5M and AE220 5M AIO PC

The AIOs are clad in a white plastic casing with a clear bezel surrounding the matte display. The Adora20 5M offers a 19.5” 1600 x 900 screen while the AE200 5M and AE220 5M feature a 19.5” 1600 x 900 and 21.5” 1920 x 1080 displays respectively. All the displays use MSI’s anti flicker, blue light reduction, and optional anti-glare technologies to reduce eye strain. The panels are multi-touch capable as well.

As far as I/O, the AIOs have webcams, optical disc drives, USB 3.0, USB 2.0, HDMI, RJ45 Ethernet, analog audio in/out, and an SD card reader. All of the PCs support 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi. The Entertainment series PCs (AE200 5M and AE220 5M) further add a Mini-PCIe connection and a COM port on the back to support barcode scanners, card readers, and other legacy peripherals.

Internally, the PCs are powered by a low power AMD “Beema” APU, up to 8GB of DDR3L memory, and a single 2.5” SATA III hard drive or SSD. The Beema APUs in question are the AMD A4-6210 and E2-6110 with the Adora20 5M getting the latter chip. Both processors are 15W 28nm SoCs with four Puma+ x86 cores and discrete Radeon GCN graphics. The A4-6210 and E2-6110 are similarly configured but the A4-6210 has higher clockspeeds on the quad core CPU (up to 1.8GHz vs 1.5GHz) and 128 GCN graphics cores (600MHz vs 500MHz). Josh wrote up an article following the launch of Beema that goes into more details, but the gist of it is that Beema is competing with Intel’s Bay Trail Atom chips in this area and the chips tend to trade benchmark wins. Depending on the application used under Windows 7/8.1, users should see roughly similar performance versus an Atom based system. I will admit to being surprised to see AMD get a design win here given the huge popularity of Bay Trail, but in this form factor Beema should do well.

Rear IO of the AE220 5M and AE200 5M PCs.

As is usually the case with these sort of announcements, there is no word on pricing or availability yet. Keep in mind that the AE200 5M and AE220 5M are aimed at businesses for use as kiosks, checkout terminals, product demonstrations, et al while the Adora20 5M is aimed more towards consumers who need a second PC or a primary PC for those with basic (mostly web-based or media playback focused) needs.

UPDATE 2: If you missed the live stream you missed the prizes! But you can still watch the replay to get all the information and Q&A that went along with it as we discuss the GTX 960 and many more topics from the NVIDIA universe.

UPDATE (1/22): Well, the secret is out. Today's discussion will be about the new GeForce GTX 960, a $199 graphics card that takes power efficiency to a previously un-seen level! If you haven't read my review of the card yet, you should do so first, but then be sure you are ready for today's live stream and giveaway - details below! And don't forget: if you have questions, please leave them in the comments!

Get yourself ready, it’s time for another GeForce GTX live stream hosted by PC Perspective’s Ryan Shrout and NVIDIA’s Tom Petersen. Though we can’t dive into the exact details of what topics are going to be covered, intelligent readers that keep an eye on the rumors on our site will likely be able to guess what is happening on January 22nd.

On hand to talk about the products, answer questions about technologies in the GeForce family including GPUs, G-Sync, GameWorks, GeForce Experience and more will be Tom Petersen, well known on the LAN party and events circuit. To spice things up as well Tom has worked with graphics card partners to bring along a sizeable swag pack to give away LIVE during the event, including new GTX graphics cards. LOTS of graphics cards.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 Live Stream and Giveaway

10am PT / 1pm ET - January 22nd

Here are some of the prizes we have lined up for those of you that join us for the live stream:

3 x MSI GeForce GTX 960 Graphics Cards

4 x EVGA GeForce GTX 960 Graphics Cards

3 x ASUS GeForce GTX 960 Graphics Cards

Thanks to ASUS, EVGA and MSI for supporting the stream!

The event will take place Thursday, January 22nd at 1pm ET / 10am PT at http://www.pcper.com/live. There you’ll be able to catch the live video stream as well as use our chat room to interact with the audience, asking questions for me and Tom to answer live. To win the prizes you will have to be watching the live stream, with exact details of the methodology for handing out the goods coming at the time of the event.

Tom has a history of being both informative and entertaining and these live streaming events are always full of fun and technical information that you can get literally nowhere else. Previous streams have produced news as well – including statements on support for Adaptive Sync, release dates for displays and first-ever demos of triple display G-Sync functionality. You never know what’s going to happen or what will be said!

If you have questions, please leave them in the comments below and we'll look through them just before the start of the live stream. Of course you'll be able to tweet us questions @pcper and we'll be keeping an eye on the IRC chat as well for more inquiries. What do you want to know and hear from Tom or I?

So join us! Set your calendar for this coming Thursday at 1pm ET / 10am PT and be here at PC Perspective to catch it. If you are a forgetful type of person, sign up for the PC Perspective Live mailing list that we use exclusively to notify users of upcoming live streaming events including these types of specials and our regular live podcast. I promise, no spam will be had!

"NVIDIA is today launching a GPU aimed at the "sweet spot" of the video card market. With an unexpectedly low MSRP, we find out if the new GeForce GTX 960 has what it takes to compete with the competition. The MSI GTX 960 GAMING reviewed here today is a retail card you will be able to purchase. No reference card in this review."

Inside the red and black striped body of this mouse is a quad-core ARM Cortex processor of unknown pedigree running at 1.4GHz and 128GB of flash storage; no information on how much RAM might be available. It has inbuilt WiFi, a pair of USB 3.0 ports and a single micro-HDMI port for output and it will charge wirelessly when placed on a pad via Qi or a similar solution. As well the regular mouse input the Mouse-Box will also have an accelerometer and gyroscope, perhaps a revival of the 3D interface mice which appeared and quickly disappeared a few years back. Check out the video at The Register to see the team's pitch and a way to get in contact with them.

"The specs aren't going to excite gamers, but Polish developer Przemysław Strzelczyk and his team have built a decent working computer into a Mouse."

That's right, Eldar and their tissue paper clad ships will be going up against the city sized ships of the Imperium, Abaddon the Despoiler's Black Legion and even the cobbled together Orc vessels which have grown large enough to deserve the name Battlekrooser. The single player and possibly the two player co-op missions will be Imperium only, while multiplayer will allow you to choose to control filthy Xenos fleets. In both cases the ships and crew will accumulate experience and upgrade skills or weaponry but only if they survive battle and do not get executed for not following orders. Exterminatus will be present in the game as well as boarding parties, with the latter being restricted to scuttling ships. The game will be based on it's tabletop forefather but will not be enslaved to it, map movement is expected to be turn based but the battles will be in real time, at a pace which matches the ponderous size of these ships. Check out the excitement at Rock, Paper, SHOTGUN.

"The news that an adaptation of Games Workshop’s Battlefleet Gothic was in development made for happy reading last week but solid facts were thin on the ground. We knew that the game would be real-time rather than turn-based, which was cause for concern in some quarters, and that four factions would be available."

Linux.com has put together a quick tutorial on how to stream content to Chromecast from a machine running Linux, giving you an incredibly inexpensive and effective way to stream your own capture media. With the use of a Samba group in openSUSE you can send data to the Chromecast dongle attached to your TV, something that was not initially possible with Chromecast. The author took this a step further, showing you how to set up your Android devices to stream to Chromecast as well. Learn how to here.

"Chromecast is one of the most used devices in my household. After using it for over a year now, I believe there is no longer a market for the so-called 'smart TV'. Inexpensive devices like Chromecast can turn any HDMI-enabled TV into a smart TV with immense possibilities to expand its features."

Microsoft will hold a briefing tomorrow (Wednesday, January 21st at 12pm EST/5pm UTC) about “The Next Chapter” of Windows 10. This has been described as the Consumer keynote, mirroring the original one that was supposedly intended for the enterprise. Otherwise, there are few official comments regarding the event, but there are also things that we can speculate on.

Here is what I expect to see:

A New Build for Windows 10

Maybe it will not be released on the same day as the speech, but it cannot really be too far behind. We are about two-thirds through January and December was skipped, so it must be happening soon. When 9879 was released, Microsoft said that it would be the last build of 2014 and that “We'll have something new to share with you early in 2015”. Whatever that is (or those things are) will probably be discussed at the event, which means that the build is probably not too far behind it.

DirectX 12

When the graphics API was announced, they specifically said the following (see our recap for the second slide that was posted at 10:48am PST):

Targeting Holiday 2015 games

Preview release coming later this year

Don't want to wait that long? Early access!

The preview release later in 2014 did not happen, but the early access did. As such, I am guessing that the date slipped to either the next Windows 10 build, or maybe a build or two after. Whenever it happens specifically, I am guessing that it will be mentioned at this event and available for developers soon (and not just a hand-picked group of Early Access members). Sure, it could wait until Build 2015 in April, but the original slide sounds like they were targeting the end of 2014.

Also, the DirectX 12 Twitter Account just retweeted the live stream and Phil Spencer will be there.

'Spartan' Browser (Maybe with DirectX 12 Support?)

Speaking of DirectX 12, its goal is to utilize GPU shader cores as efficiently as possible, reducing the time it holds up the CPU and balancing its load across multiple cores. This leads to power efficiency and the ability to load many more tasks on the GPU.

These are all things that a web browser vendor would love! Web standards are inherently difficult to multi-thread, because they are designed as sets of stages which build upon other stages. DirectX 12 could probably help immensely, at least with the drawing stage. Web content tends to be fairly simple, but there can be a lot of it, especially for complex Canvas animations (and especially for mobile devices).

It was also recently rumored that Trident, the rendering engine behind Internet Explorer and the not-quite-confirmed Spartan browser, was forked into two maintained versions. The expectation is that this was for compatibility reasons, where the new version can be developed to W3C (and other) standards without worrying about legacy, Internet Explorer-based compatibility cruft. If porting a DirectX 11 applications to DirectX 12 will be annoying, I can see why Microsoft chose to draw the compatibility line just behind that initiative. And honestly, how many people care about rendering, power, and multi-core performance increases for IE8-designed, and therefore desktop-based, web applications?

Continuum, Cortana, and Other Changes

Again, this is what Microsoft considers a Consumer event. As such, it would make sense for them to describe an ideal consumer device, which probably includes two-in-ones. Cortana should also be discussed as well, which is intended to bring value to the users and probably lead them to Bing services. Leaks have also suggested that they are preparing a dark theme.

The Cooler Master Hyper D92 does count as compact with dimensions of 5.7 x 3.3 x 4.9", at 448g it is lighter than many coolers on the market and with 53.4mm of clearance over your DIMM slots it should not interfere with most RAM. The reduction in size does have an effect on the heatsinks ability to disperse heat but The Tech Report's testing shows better performance than the stock Intel heatsink when cooling an i5-4690K and at a lower noise level. The performance is not up to snuff for overclockers nor are the stock fans quiet enough at full speed for those wanting a near silent build but for those looking for a good compromise between those two scenarios at a decent price it is well worth considering the Hyper D92

"The Hyper D92 is a compact tower-style cooler with dual 92-mm fans. We tested its performance on stock-clocked and overclocked CPUs to see how it stacks up."